Jared Diamond

Date: 2026-09-03 | Duration: 2h 28m

Episode Overview

Joe opens the conversation with Jared Diamond by immediately diving into Diamond's latest book, and a key question that has permeated Diamond's life: "Do bad as well as good people make a difference?" Diamond recounts his upbringing under the shadow of World War II and the Holocaust, his experience living in democratic Chile before Pinochet's coup, and personal encounters with impactful leaders. This deeply personal introduction sets the stage for a wide-ranging discussion on the profound influence individuals have on history and society, often shaped by unforeseen circumstances. The conversation explores how leaders like Hitler, Genghis Khan, and Jesus Christ were propelled by a confluence of personal qualities and external factors. Diamond highlights the role of environmental conditions, such as the wet decade of Genghis Khan's birth, and the timely emergence of Christianity within the Roman Empire, which fostered its spread due to its universal message, high regard for women, and emphasis on literacy. They also delve into the surprising origins of influential religious figures like Paul, who never met Jesus but became a pivotal organizer of Christianity, and Joseph Smith, whose charismatic leadership and Brigham Young's organizational skills, rather than theology, drove Mormonism's success. Later, the discussion pivots to Jared Diamond's unique perspectives on technology, his "technophobia," and his analog writing process with a pencil and eraser, which he believes fosters a more concise prose style. They touch on the complexities of language and translation, with Diamond sharing anecdotes about the untranslatable nuances between languages like Italian, German, and New Guinea's tonal Fowai Yao. The episode concludes with a fascinating exploration of writing systems, from ancient cuneiform to the modern Korean Hangul, and the remarkable story of Sequoia, the Cherokee who independently invented a syllabary. Diamond also recounts his experiences with remote New Guinea tribes, discussing their unique customs, including endocannibalism and initiation rites, and the origins of the prion disease Kuru among the Fore people.

About Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond is a renowned author and researcher known for exploring how geography, culture, and individual agency shape human history and society. His work examines the intersection of environmental factors and human decision-making, drawing on diverse fields including anthropology, history, and biology. Diamond brings a distinctive perspective informed by his experiences living in different cultures and his observations of remote societies, particularly in New Guinea, while maintaining an analog approach to writing that he believes sharpens his thinking.

Transcript Excerpt

[00:00:01] Joe Rogan Podcast, checking out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Very nice to be you, sir. That's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. Thank you. I really enjoyed guns, germs, and steel, and I just got into this yesterday. [00:00:20] And today, I started reading your new book. Awesome. Awesome so far. Fascinating. I have so many questions. But my first one is, have you done podcasts before? I've done podcasts, quite a few podcasts at home in my wife's study on my wife's screen, and I've done face-to-face interviews like with you. [00:00:43] Oh, okay. Cool. So, first of all, why did you write this book? Why did I write this book? A short answer is I was born in 1937, which means that I grew up in the Second World War under the shadow of Hitler. Every day there was something going on with the war. My father paced up on the wall of my bedroom, a map of the European theater and the Pacific theater. And there was always the question, why did it happen? [00:01:34] I lived in Chile, the most democratic country of South America. Before Pinochet, nobody saw what was coming with Pinochet. His own fellow generals didn't see it coming. And so there's been throughout my life this question, do bad as well as good people make a difference? Also, my wife was poised. The last of my family in Europe disappeared in the Holocaust. Marie's mother ended up in Auschwitz. [00:02:00] She survived, but others of the family didn't survive. And so ever since I've known Marie, there's constantly been that question. And then leaders have made a difference in my life. There was the chairman of the Cambridge Physiology Department who, when a pump, water pump that I had been operating blew overnight, and it flooded my labrum, but it also flooded the labrum below me. and that was a poor choice of lab room to flood because it belonged to Lord Adrian, Nobel Prize winner, the father-in-law of my thesis supervisor and the master of my college at Cambri...

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